'New China hands' wield business tools / On the fast track

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, January 22, 2006

Photo of Kate Zhao (center), for use in Guangzhou22 Sunday Biz story. She says she has the rights. Credit: Kate Zhao/CCTV

Photo of Kate Zhao (center), for use in Guangzhou22 Sunday Biz story. She says she has the rights. Credit: Kate Zhao/CCTV

Photo: Kate Zhao/CCTV

'New China hands' wield business tools / On the fast track

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Westerners wise in the ways of China have long been referred to as "old China hands." Now, there are "new China hands" -- people savvy in the ways of doing business in a post-Maoist China. Old China hands were diplomats, soldiers and missionaries dispatched to China to look after Western interests. Many of today's new China hands come from the Chinese diaspora: U.S. citizens born in China, educated abroad and affiliated with U.S. companies in the land of their birth. Others are cosmopolitan Chinese who work for U.S. companies without ever leaving China. Here are the stories of four new China hands.

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Kate Zhao is moving at warp speed. At 25, she has already: Earned a master's degree from one of China's leading universities. Won a nationwide contest on a television show broadly similar to Donald Trump's "The Apprentice," which earned her a coveted marketing internship with Proctor & Gamble. Landed her next marketing job with another multinational company: the French cosmetics firm L'Oreal, in Shanghai, China's largest city.

Zhao, like her husband, Moming Zhao, a student in the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley, is part of a new generation of young Chinese who see careers with multinational corporations as pathways into the middle class and a bright future. Brainy, driven, fluent in English and Chinese, they are bringing a new dimension to the idea of old China hands.

Zhao, who is petite, energetic and well-spoken, says she was proud to work for Proctor & Gamble, where she was an assistant public relations manager in the company's Guangzhou office. The U.S. consumer products giant is considered an enlightened employer, and its cosmetics are very popular, she said.

Zhao won her internship after besting hundreds of other contestants in a reality show called "Absolute Challenge" on the Chinese network CCTV2.

Zhao was given the task of persuading strangers to try out teeth-whitening strips for P&G's Crest toothpaste, a job she managed with aplomb by heading to a shopping street popular with foreigners in the small town of Dali and chatting them up.

Zhao met her husband shortly before her TV star turn. The couple were married in May.

Three months later, Moming headed to Berkeley to begin a two-year journalism program. The newlyweds are apart months at a time, living on opposite sides of the Pacific to further their careers.

Zhao says she has no plans to leave China and live abroad. She does worry that her changing homeland is paying a steep price to become a modern, cosmopolitan society:

"I miss the leisure time of the past. Nowadays, everyone is more and more busy with their own business, study, entertainment, working.

"We have less and less time to talk to each other, to enjoy parties, or even have family dinner. As the competition grew fiercer, we lost our courtesy and etiquette. A country famous for its Confucian-style courtesy is losing itself. And I miss the old harmony."